"At first, when I heard it, I thought maybe they had announced the wrong numbers, they were so bad," said Robert Brusca of Fact and Opinion Economics.

Economists were expecting government job losses, but few had predicted that private businesses would pull the reins back so tightly.

Private businesses added only 57,000 jobs in June - the weakest growth since May 2010. Earlier this year, businesses had been adding more than 200,000 jobs each month.

"You look at the charts for private sector growth and you could see, we were building a nice, steady crescendo," Brusca said. "All of a sudden the bottom fell out!"

The main culprit economists are point to: uncertainty.

Businesses are hesitant to hire given uncertainty surrounding federal spending cuts and tax policy, as Congress still has yet to reach an agreement on the debt ceiling and long-term measures for trimming the nation's deficit.

"I think a lot of this is the backlash to the impasse in Washington," Brusca said. "If you're a small business man, you sit back and say I'm not doing anything, I'm not hiring -- until I see what happens in Washington."

But a variety of other factors also could have contributed to the recent weakness.

"There isn't a single silver bullet -- there are a number of factors coming together," said John Silvia, chief economist for Wells Fargo. "The tsunami, floods, higher gas prices, and the stalemate in Washington all create a lot of uncertainty."

Playing politics: Speaking via his first-ever Twitter town hall earlier this week, President Obama admitted job creation hasn't been as robust as previously hoped, but defended his administration against Republican claims that stimulus funding did little to create jobs.

His Council of Economic Advisors estimates that the Recovery Act saved at least 2.4 million jobs that would have otherwise been lost if not for the stimulus.

The disappointing jobs report on Friday immediately became a springboard for political rhetoric launched from both sides.

"The American people are still asking the question: where are the jobs?" Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner said in a statement. "Today's report is more evidence that the misguided 'stimulus' spending binge, excessive regulations, and an overwhelming national debt continue to hold back private-sector job creation in our country."